The number of trains running on HS2 will be almost halved and services will travel more slowly in a proposed shake-up of the £72bn line as ministers scramble to save money.
Whitehall officials are considering reducing the number of trains from 18 to 10 an hour, insiders said.
Meanwhile, plans to run services at up to 360 km/h (224 mph) are in jeopardy as officials weigh whether to reduce maximum speeds.
The proposals are among a series of cost-cutting measures under discussion as part of an overhaul codenamed Project Silverlight and Operation Blue Diamond, as ministers grapple with huge inflationary pressures on Britain’s biggest infrastructure project.
The Department for Transport on Tuesday refused to rule out reducing the frequency and speed of HS2 trains.
Let's just put this utter waste of money project out of its misery! We can use just half the cost of it to improve railways across the country in general.
UK govts have always done this sort of idiocy. They lack the nerve to spend what is needed to do the job properly and then the country winds up with a botched make-or-mend solution that costs a bl**dy fortune to use and maintain when it works at all.
I agree with you. Do it right or do not bother doing it at all.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
My dad died yesterday peacefully. 96 years old so a good innings. Excellent care by the NHS since Christmas Day when he collapsed with covid.
Having been critical of @hyufd re his views on inheritance I am almost certainly going to do what he suggests. I am going to inherit half of a small semi. I can't spend the money I currently have before I die so will probably pass my inheritance to my children. Sigh.
Genuinely idk what happened to Moon Rabbit but she’s now the most Tory poster on here. Embarrassing
Come on horse, why is someone posting views embarrassing? This site needs differences of opinion or it becomes an echo chamber. If you want that follow lefties on twitter.
Got no issue with that.
It's doing a complete about turn from being leftie to being right wing in like two weeks.
As I said, she's not here seriously.
And that’s fine. Don’t take the nonsense seriously. The polling bollocks has been risible. But it amuses.
I'm less immersed in, and knowledgeable about, USA politics than most on here, but I can't help but notice the overwhelming consensus that Kamala Harris is useless, and this seems to be an unquestionable fact. But I've yet to read a convincing account of quite what makes her so useless. Is this just PB groupthink, or am I missing something? I rather like her, but I'm genuinely open to being enlightened as to why she's so hopeless and why I need to change my view.
I'm the same, but it's undeniable that Harris tends to poll worse than Biden. Not vastly worse, but still.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Its always a tiny vocal minority, but because of social media (and how it encourages a pile on) makes it seem far better than it really is. Be it "we are all off to Mastodon, because of Hitler Musk" to Hogwarts Legacy.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
JK Rowling deserves a lot of praise for the way she has consistently stood up to the mob in the face of death threats, threats of violence and attempting to silence her. She is the standout person for free speech and expression. She cannot be silenced or cancelled and she uses that power to enable others to speak out and tell their own stories.
A true inspiration and whatever royalties she gets from this game are well deserved.
I'm less immersed in, and knowledgeable about, USA politics than most on here, but I can't help but notice the overwhelming consensus that Kamala Harris is useless, and this seems to be an unquestionable fact. But I've yet to read a convincing account of quite what makes her so useless. Is this just PB groupthink, or am I missing something? I rather like her, but I'm genuinely open to being enlightened as to why she's so hopeless and why I need to change my view.
I'm the same, but it's undeniable that Harris tends to poll worse than Biden. Not vastly worse, but still.
As the Government's own passenger transport numbers are now only being released "following user feedback", we don't know how much of a "return" from WFH there really has been.
My anecdotal evidence continues to suggest we are very much in a TWaT (Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays) commuting environment with Mondays and Fridays still very quiet on public transport in London.
A few large organisations and some fellow travellers notwithstanding, many have adapted quite easily and seamlessly to the new working world. As usual, "the public sector" is singled out because apparently all civil servants have to be at their desks every day.
I've always said home working isn't for everyone and I'm as much against forcing people to work at home as I would be forcing people to be at a desk. In truth, of course, if a team of 10 has 9 people happy to work a home, the other person who would rather be in the office with people becomes, if not a problem then a concern.
So much depends on the nature of the work, the nature of the staff and the nature of the organisation any top down mandated approach is doomed to failure. There was a notion to allow organisations and individuals to make their own choices (I believe it's called freedom) and the same should apply to "the public sector" (whatever that means). Indeed, I'd venture roles where you sit at a desk all day long aren't a) as prevalent as many believe and b) as rewarding as some think.
The problem is that there has been choice by managers and employees. Unfortunately, some annoying idiots are complaining. Customers they call themselves.
Some organisation (both public and private) have removed all contactability and aren't doing their jobs. Various local councils services are running - in the sense of the contractors do their thing - but there is no-one actually doing the management stuff that needs doing. The DVLA seems to have gone to the pub and not come back.
The problem comes in organisations that seem to have bad organisation and little way to track what is going on. Those who have experienced the culture, in some organisations, that sick leave is seen as "extra" leave, know exactly what is going on.
Choice seems to be the issue in our place.
Senior management have this utopic view that groups of people will spontaneously self-organise into working patterns naturally - e.g. there's a crucial crunch period that needs in-person contact, or a new person joins and everyone comes in for a bit to get them started and up to speed, so everyone will volunteer to come in for those things on agreed days.
Reality is neither of these things happen, >90% of people will just stay WFH >90% of the time (mostly because it's convenient but in a non-trivial number of cases because it's easy to hide, as others have said). And management are too afraid to basically tell people to come in, even if it's only the odd day here or there- so crucial crunch period gets buggered over by no-one collaborating well and new person gets buggered over by not embedding into the team and learning new stuff just by osmosis.
Unsurprising . Couldn't you argue that most people who have selected a film to go to or watch at home are predisposed to liking it? I have liked virtually all the films I have seen over the last few months because I am selective about what I watch - I look at trailers, follow actors/directors I like and so on. Very few people would waste their time/money on films that don't appeal to them in some way.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
We don't adjust visual art, music or literature 'for age', so why films?
We do, otherwise so much really old stuff - and often the same old stuff - wouldn't be always included in 'top tens'. Like with sport. We adjust for age. Give it its due regard. Eg prime Pele wouldn't get in the Man City team. Prime Rod Laver couldn't take a set of today's world number 20. Yet we - rightly imo - consider both to be all time greats. It's a bit different in the arts but not totally different. This factor still applies.
Re Pele and Rod Laver, you should allow for the fact that the games have changed. E.g. Pele played with leather footballs, and super-sized and -strung rackets weren't available to Laver.
It’s impossible to compare eras really, but I believe that the greats of sport, had they been born into different eras would still have excelled. Matt Syed bangs on about 10,000 hours of training, and that’s certainly a part of it, but elite sports stars also have genetic advantages.
Don5 forget that players drive each other to greater levels. Andy Murray would have won more Slams in any other era than the Federer/Nadal/Jokovic nightmare he found himself in. But ironically he became a far better player by necessity to try to live with them.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
JK Rowling deserves a lot of praise for the way she has consistently stood up to the mob in the face of death threats, threats of violence and attempting to silence her. She is the standout person for free speech and expression. She cannot be silenced or cancelled and she uses that power to enable others to speak out and tell their own stories.
A true inspiration and whatever royalties she gets from this game are well deserved.
The thing is on basically every other issue she is about as liberal leftie as it gets, but now consistently portrayed as if she regularly speaks in favour of Hitler.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
We don't adjust visual art, music or literature 'for age', so why films?
We do, otherwise so much really old stuff - and often the same old stuff - wouldn't be always included in 'top tens'. Like with sport. We adjust for age. Give it its due regard. Eg prime Pele wouldn't get in the Man City team. Prime Rod Laver couldn't take a set of today's world number 20. Yet we - rightly imo - consider both to be all time greats. It's a bit different in the arts but not totally different. This factor still applies.
Re Pele and Rod Laver, you should allow for the fact that the games have changed. E.g. Pele played with leather footballs, and super-sized and -strung rackets weren't available to Laver.
It’s impossible to compare eras really, but I believe that the greats of sport, had they been born into different eras would still have excelled. Matt Syed bangs on about 10,000 hours of training, and that’s certainly a part of it, but elite sports stars also have genetic advantages.
Don5 forget that players drive each other to greater levels. Andy Murray would have won more Slams in any other era than the Federer/Nadal/Jokovic nightmare he found himself in. But ironically he became a far better player by necessity to try to live with them.
The much quoted 10,000 hour "rule" is absolutely without proper evidence.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
No one on here seems to give a toss about the latest JKR revenue raiser except the usual suspects moaning about woke activists. Does that mean that they’re the activists?
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
No accounting for what will strike a chord sometimes. There were many young adult fantasy series before JK (and a great many more afterwards), some no doubt seen as superior in many ways. None are likely to ever be as as big as hers, but the quality level certainly doesn't determine which ones succeed - plenty of little known gems, and bland successes (its sometimes argued blandness helps with mega successes in films etc, to have global appeal).
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
Genuinely idk what happened to Moon Rabbit but she’s now the most Tory poster on here. Embarrassing
I have always regarded her as a Tory in spite of her denials.
What’s a Tory in your eyes?
Raised by two Conservative Party members but in 9 years have yet to vote Tory.
I have my idea what the Conservative Party should be, and this is not it. The Party always stood for opening up markets, helping business, sound finance and growth - not hostile to a public sector but through sound finance and growth and no debt repayments actually providing the best foundation for providing the best funding to public services.
Classic Conservativism always had a liberal - in the old fashioned, tolerant sense which believes in freedom, rights and responsibility - so Being liberal is at the heart of being a true Conservative, and makes the difference between them and of what is to the right of them.
The Conservative Party have committed self mutilation in the name of Brexit. Boris extermination of the life long liberal conservatives MPs over one vote, after all his own and friends rebelling was disgusting.
I have as yet to vote Conservative in my life, and have no plans to start anytime soon. A vote should be decided not just on what a party is called or stands for, but also on how incompetent and corrupt they currently are. And day after day in this parliament it’s been incompetence and sleaze.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
JK Rowling deserves a lot of praise for the way she has consistently stood up to the mob in the face of death threats, threats of violence and attempting to silence her. She is the standout person for free speech and expression. She cannot be silenced or cancelled and she uses that power to enable others to speak out and tell their own stories.
A true inspiration and whatever royalties she gets from this game are well deserved.
The thing is on basically every other issue she is about as liberal leftie as it gets, but now consistently portrayed as if she regularly speaks in favour of Hitler.
The deranged gaslighting of global bien pensant opinion against JK Rowling has been one of the most depressing spectacles of modern times.
Perfectly normal people have convinced themselves that she is a moral leper. This includes much of the cast of the Harry Potter films.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
JK Rowling deserves a lot of praise for the way she has consistently stood up to the mob in the face of death threats, threats of violence and attempting to silence her. She is the standout person for free speech and expression. She cannot be silenced or cancelled and she uses that power to enable others to speak out and tell their own stories.
A true inspiration and whatever royalties she gets from this game are well deserved.
The thing is on basically every other issue she is about as liberal leftie as it gets, but now consistently portrayed as if she regularly speaks in favour of Hitler.
Opposing Scottish independence and being a mainstream feminist make her the Great Satan.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
Harry potter exploded when I was in school because it spoke to school kids. The first book came out when I was in first form and all of us were enthralled by it because it was kids, like us, going to school like us, but magic.
After this I hope companies rethink their current strategy of bending the knee to these activists giving in. Just tell them to get fucked and do what you were going to do anyway.
I read somewhere that the most popular boycott tweet has about 100k likes, of which a huge proportion will be bots that the activists have running to signal boost their content and agenda but even if we assume all 100k are actual people (and they're not) it still puts it at less than 1% of the total number of buyers this game will have, less than 0.5% I think. Once you strip out bots it will be less than 0.2%, and this is the most high profile campaign they've had in a long time, it is their magnum opus of woke campaigns.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
We don't adjust visual art, music or literature 'for age', so why films?
We do, otherwise so much really old stuff - and often the same old stuff - wouldn't be always included in 'top tens'. Like with sport. We adjust for age. Give it its due regard. Eg prime Pele wouldn't get in the Man City team. Prime Rod Laver couldn't take a set of today's world number 20. Yet we - rightly imo - consider both to be all time greats. It's a bit different in the arts but not totally different. This factor still applies.
Re Pele and Rod Laver, you should allow for the fact that the games have changed. E.g. Pele played with leather footballs, and super-sized and -strung rackets weren't available to Laver.
It’s impossible to compare eras really, but I believe that the greats of sport, had they been born into different eras would still have excelled. Matt Syed bangs on about 10,000 hours of training, and that’s certainly a part of it, but elite sports stars also have genetic advantages.
Don5 forget that players drive each other to greater levels. Andy Murray would have won more Slams in any other era than the Federer/Nadal/Jokovic nightmare he found himself in. But ironically he became a far better player by necessity to try to live with them.
The much quoted 10,000 hour "rule" is absolutely without proper evidence.
Yes. It’s a conveniently round number too, like 10,000 steps a day, 5 a day fruit and veg, and many many more things plucked from the air. I think my favourite is the number of glasses of water you supposedly need. Utter garbage, yet most of my students seem surgically attached to water bottles.
As the Government's own passenger transport numbers are now only being released "following user feedback", we don't know how much of a "return" from WFH there really has been.
My anecdotal evidence continues to suggest we are very much in a TWaT (Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays) commuting environment with Mondays and Fridays still very quiet on public transport in London.
A few large organisations and some fellow travellers notwithstanding, many have adapted quite easily and seamlessly to the new working world. As usual, "the public sector" is singled out because apparently all civil servants have to be at their desks every day.
I've always said home working isn't for everyone and I'm as much against forcing people to work at home as I would be forcing people to be at a desk. In truth, of course, if a team of 10 has 9 people happy to work a home, the other person who would rather be in the office with people becomes, if not a problem then a concern.
So much depends on the nature of the work, the nature of the staff and the nature of the organisation any top down mandated approach is doomed to failure. There was a notion to allow organisations and individuals to make their own choices (I believe it's called freedom) and the same should apply to "the public sector" (whatever that means). Indeed, I'd venture roles where you sit at a desk all day long aren't a) as prevalent as many believe and b) as rewarding as some think.
The problem is that there has been choice by managers and employees. Unfortunately, some annoying idiots are complaining. Customers they call themselves.
Some organisation (both public and private) have removed all contactability and aren't doing their jobs. Various local councils services are running - in the sense of the contractors do their thing - but there is no-one actually doing the management stuff that needs doing. The DVLA seems to have gone to the pub and not come back.
The problem comes in organisations that seem to have bad organisation and little way to track what is going on. Those who have experienced the culture, in some organisations, that sick leave is seen as "extra" leave, know exactly what is going on.
Choice seems to be the issue in our place.
Senior management have this utopic view that groups of people will spontaneously self-organise into working patterns naturally - e.g. there's a crucial crunch period that needs in-person contact, or a new person joins and everyone comes in for a bit to get them started and up to speed, so everyone will volunteer to come in for those things on agreed days.
Reality is neither of these things happen, >90% of people will just stay WFH >90% of the time (mostly because it's convenient but in a non-trivial number of cases because it's easy to hide, as others have said). And management are too afraid to basically tell people to come in, even if it's only the odd day here or there- so crucial crunch period gets buggered over by no-one collaborating well and new person gets buggered over by not embedding into the team and learning new stuff just by osmosis.
Sounds like process is a problem.
In Agile, because you (effectively) volunteer for a series of small tasks, each with a defined amount of work (usually expressed in hours), it is very easy to see who isn't doing work.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
JK Rowling deserves a lot of praise for the way she has consistently stood up to the mob in the face of death threats, threats of violence and attempting to silence her. She is the standout person for free speech and expression. She cannot be silenced or cancelled and she uses that power to enable others to speak out and tell their own stories.
A true inspiration and whatever royalties she gets from this game are well deserved.
The thing is on basically every other issue she is about as liberal leftie as it gets, but now consistently portrayed as if she regularly speaks in favour of Hitler.
The deranged gaslighting of global bien pensant opinion against JK Rowling has been one of the most depressing spectacles of modern times.
Perfectly normal people have convinced themselves that she is a moral leper. This includes much of the cast of the Harry Potter films.
Who ought to be ashamed of themselves, since they owe their success to her.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
No accounting for what will strike a chord sometimes. There were many young adult fantasy series before JK (and a great many more afterwards), some no doubt seen as superior in many ways. None are likely to ever be as as big as hers, but the quality level certainly doesn't determine which ones succeed - plenty of little known gems, and bland successes (its sometimes argued blandness helps with mega successes in films etc, to have global appeal).
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
You find this is the back story of huge numbers of mega successful people. Most would have been successful to some extent regardless as they had talent and drive, but not necessarily "mega" successful without certain coincidences / timings out of their control e.g. Bill Gates moved school to the only one in the state with a terminal into the computer at University of Washington, and then a load of other things fell into place, such that he got 1000s of hours of access to computers at a time when virtually nobody could.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
JK Rowling deserves a lot of praise for the way she has consistently stood up to the mob in the face of death threats, threats of violence and attempting to silence her. She is the standout person for free speech and expression. She cannot be silenced or cancelled and she uses that power to enable others to speak out and tell their own stories.
A true inspiration and whatever royalties she gets from this game are well deserved.
The thing is on basically every other issue she is about as liberal leftie as it gets, but now consistently portrayed as if she regularly speaks in favour of Hitler.
It's a fascinating example of how "cancel" culture has adopted the fatwa approach - you are bad, and even asking why you are bad, is bad.
My eldest daughter was completely floored by the youngest asking "What is it that she did that is so bad? Describe in detail...."
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
No one on here seems to give a toss about the latest JKR revenue raiser except the usual suspects moaning about woke activists. Does that mean that they’re the activists?
My pre-order will arrive on Friday morning. She's got my money for sure.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
We don't adjust visual art, music or literature 'for age', so why films?
We do, otherwise so much really old stuff - and often the same old stuff - wouldn't be always included in 'top tens'. Like with sport. We adjust for age. Give it its due regard. Eg prime Pele wouldn't get in the Man City team. Prime Rod Laver couldn't take a set of today's world number 20. Yet we - rightly imo - consider both to be all time greats. It's a bit different in the arts but not totally different. This factor still applies.
Re Pele and Rod Laver, you should allow for the fact that the games have changed. E.g. Pele played with leather footballs, and super-sized and -strung rackets weren't available to Laver.
It’s impossible to compare eras really, but I believe that the greats of sport, had they been born into different eras would still have excelled. Matt Syed bangs on about 10,000 hours of training, and that’s certainly a part of it, but elite sports stars also have genetic advantages.
Don5 forget that players drive each other to greater levels. Andy Murray would have won more Slams in any other era than the Federer/Nadal/Jokovic nightmare he found himself in. But ironically he became a far better player by necessity to try to live with them.
The much quoted 10,000 hour "rule" is absolutely without proper evidence.
Yes. It’s a conveniently round number too, like 10,000 steps a day, 5 a day fruit and veg, and many many more things plucked from the air. I think my favourite is the number of glasses of water you supposedly need. Utter garbage, yet most of my students seem surgically attached to water bottles.
10,000 hours at least sounds plausible, in the sense that it feels right that you need to put in a lot of time to become an expert at something. The 8 glasses of water a day thing doesn't even sound right to me - that's an awful lot of fluid if you are not feeling thirsty.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
No accounting for what will strike a chord sometimes. There were many young adult fantasy series before JK (and a great many more afterwards), some no doubt seen as superior in many ways. None are likely to ever be as as big as hers, but the quality level certainly doesn't determine which ones succeed - plenty of little known gems, and bland successes (its sometimes argued blandness helps with mega successes in films etc, to have global appeal).
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
I’d say the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy is far and away better than Harry Potter, but that was written long before the boom in fantasy.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
JK Rowling deserves a lot of praise for the way she has consistently stood up to the mob in the face of death threats, threats of violence and attempting to silence her. She is the standout person for free speech and expression. She cannot be silenced or cancelled and she uses that power to enable others to speak out and tell their own stories.
A true inspiration and whatever royalties she gets from this game are well deserved.
The thing is on basically every other issue she is about as liberal leftie as it gets, but now consistently portrayed as if she regularly speaks in favour of Hitler.
Opposing Scottish independence and being a mainstream feminist make her the Great Satan.
She also refused to join a cultural boycott of Israel. Didn’t go down well either.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
No accounting for what will strike a chord sometimes. There were many young adult fantasy series before JK (and a great many more afterwards), some no doubt seen as superior in many ways. None are likely to ever be as as big as hers, but the quality level certainly doesn't determine which ones succeed - plenty of little known gems, and bland successes (its sometimes argued blandness helps with mega successes in films etc, to have global appeal).
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
I’d say the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy is far and away better than Harry Potter, but that was written long before the boom in fantasy.
Read it for the first time a few months ago. It was decent, but I can't say I was blown away, but they are probably aimed more at the younger audience like HP was. so not easy to judge.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
First is Hitchcock,
Indeed.
The third, Michael Powell.
Ha no. The third is not British.
Of course, I was separately trying to think of the best ever BRITISH film and it is hard not to choose the “Red Shoes”. Totally ripped off of course by Aaronofsky for “Black Swan”.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
No accounting for what will strike a chord sometimes. There were many young adult fantasy series before JK (and a great many more afterwards), some no doubt seen as superior in many ways. None are likely to ever be as as big as hers, but the quality level certainly doesn't determine which ones succeed - plenty of little known gems, and bland successes (its sometimes argued blandness helps with mega successes in films etc, to have global appeal).
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
I’d say the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy is far and away better than Harry Potter, but that was written long before the boom in fantasy.
True - but fantasy was always a massive seller, in a background way. In many houses where you don't see books in general, you often saw a pile of thick fantasy series books.
This is why, every now and again, the studio execs would try and make films out of it. Harry Potter caught the wave of high end special effects of the type required being possible and cheap enough.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
No accounting for what will strike a chord sometimes. There were many young adult fantasy series before JK (and a great many more afterwards), some no doubt seen as superior in many ways. None are likely to ever be as as big as hers, but the quality level certainly doesn't determine which ones succeed - plenty of little known gems, and bland successes (its sometimes argued blandness helps with mega successes in films etc, to have global appeal).
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
You find this is the back story of huge numbers of mega successful people. Most would have been successful to some extent regardless as they had talent and drive, but not necessarily "mega" successful without certain coincidences / timings out of their control e.g. Bill Gates moved school to the only one in the state with a terminal into the computer at University of Washington, and then a load of other things fell into place, such that he got 1000s of hours of access to computers at a time when virtually nobody could.
In reading that collection of Prime Minister essays that Iain Dale put together (of variable quality), the key to success appears to be having a rich uncle, it comes up time and again.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
No accounting for what will strike a chord sometimes. There were many young adult fantasy series before JK (and a great many more afterwards), some no doubt seen as superior in many ways. None are likely to ever be as as big as hers, but the quality level certainly doesn't determine which ones succeed - plenty of little known gems, and bland successes (its sometimes argued blandness helps with mega successes in films etc, to have global appeal).
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
I’d say the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy is far and away better than Harry Potter, but that was written long before the boom in fantasy.
Genuinely idk what happened to Moon Rabbit but she’s now the most Tory poster on here. Embarrassing
Come on horse, why is someone posting views embarrassing? This site needs differences of opinion or it becomes an echo chamber. If you want that follow lefties on twitter.
Got no issue with that.
It's doing a complete about turn from being leftie to being right wing in like two weeks.
As I said, she's not here seriously.
“It's doing a complete about turn from being leftie to being right wing in like two weeks.”
You don’t actually read my posts. I’ve never been a leftie!
Polling wise I was right about the mini surge for Sunak early December and that Labour have lost half the “Truss bounce” they got. The joke is you for denying these facts. But it is best to look at longer sequences of polls month to month for movement. I’m not even keen on averaging from wildly differing pollsters, rather pick through 9 polls from same firm for movements. In that sense, since Labours polling crash nothing has happened in the polls, flat for a long time.
Maybe it’s terminology with you, like “what Labour crash in polls?” Truss proper crashed giving Labour a big bounce. To lose half that bounce so quickly before stalemate took over, that can be called a crash, drop, fall. It happened. Get over it.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
No accounting for what will strike a chord sometimes. There were many young adult fantasy series before JK (and a great many more afterwards), some no doubt seen as superior in many ways. None are likely to ever be as as big as hers, but the quality level certainly doesn't determine which ones succeed - plenty of little known gems, and bland successes (its sometimes argued blandness helps with mega successes in films etc, to have global appeal).
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
IMV, the biggest negative against JKR is the way she did not acknowledge Jill Murphy and 'The Worst Witch'. Because HP so obviously borrows from that series; though taken individually, none of the tropes were unique to Murphy either, AIUI
(Having read both, I think 'The Worst Witch' are actually better books, particularly for younger teens. The good thing about HP is that they 'grow up' with the reader - if you can stop your chid reading them in one year...)
I’m not much of a film buff but my top ten would be (in no particular order)
The Usual Suspects, Godfather I and II, Se7en, Scarface (De Palma), The Two Towers, The Empire Strikes Back, From Russia with Love, Dune (Villeneuve), The Wolf of Wall Street, Some Line It Ho.
I’m not much of a film buff but my top ten would be (in no particular order)
The Usual Suspects, Godfather I and II, Se7en, Scarface (De Palma), The Two Towers, The Empire Strikes Back, From Russia with Love, Dune (Villeneuve), The Wolf of Wall Street, Some Line It Ho.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
First is Hitchcock,
Indeed.
The third, Michael Powell.
Ha no. The third is not British.
Of course, I was separately trying to think of the best ever BRITISH film and it is hard not to choose the “Red Shoes”. Totally ripped off of course by Aaronofsky for “Black Swan”.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
No accounting for what will strike a chord sometimes. There were many young adult fantasy series before JK (and a great many more afterwards), some no doubt seen as superior in many ways. None are likely to ever be as as big as hers, but the quality level certainly doesn't determine which ones succeed - plenty of little known gems, and bland successes (its sometimes argued blandness helps with mega successes in films etc, to have global appeal).
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
I’d say the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy is far and away better than Harry Potter, but that was written long before the boom in fantasy.
And Le Guin a deep moral thinker.
Good god man, are you implying Rowling is not a great moral thinker of our age? Off to the Woko Haram with you.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
First is Hitchcock,
Indeed.
The third, Michael Powell.
Ha no. The third is not British.
Of course, I was separately trying to think of the best ever BRITISH film and it is hard not to choose the “Red Shoes”. Totally ripped off of course by Aaronofsky for “Black Swan”.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
We don't adjust visual art, music or literature 'for age', so why films?
I think we do adjust those for age when assessing them. Quite a lot of great literature of the 19th Century is quite turgid and waffle to modern readers, as well as caring a great deal about issues considered trivial now. Simultaneously having prejudices and assumptions that would be quite grating in modern works. Colonialist, Imperialist, class and gender attitudes are rightly put in the context of their times, so why not other aspects of writing, or film?
Eye of the beholder, I guess Foxy.
Austen, Dickens, the Brontës, Collins, Hardy, Steinbeck, Hemmingway... all stand the test of time and, imo, require no 'allowance' for their age.
Yes. An extraordinary list (each person is different I suppose) of the writers who just don't date. For me Austen is the outstanding example. There are books written 10 years ago, and lauded at the time now dated and forgotten. The gift of writing in such a way that it renews with each generation is magic. Despite appearances Shakespeare has less of that magic than people assume.
To the list above add Trollope and Pepys. And Chaucer's Prologue - which I feel is the oldest English stuff that can be read straight, with absolute modern immediacy.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
No accounting for what will strike a chord sometimes. There were many young adult fantasy series before JK (and a great many more afterwards), some no doubt seen as superior in many ways. None are likely to ever be as as big as hers, but the quality level certainly doesn't determine which ones succeed - plenty of little known gems, and bland successes (its sometimes argued blandness helps with mega successes in films etc, to have global appeal).
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
I’d say the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy is far and away better than Harry Potter, but that was written long before the boom in fantasy.
And Le Guin a deep moral thinker.
Good god man, are you implying Rowling is not a great moral thinker of our age? Off to the Woko Haram with you.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
First is Hitchcock,
Indeed.
The third, Michael Powell.
Ha no. The third is not British.
Of course, I was separately trying to think of the best ever BRITISH film and it is hard not to choose the “Red Shoes”. Totally ripped off of course by Aaronofsky for “Black Swan”.
Kurosawa ?
For me, Fellini.
But depending on taste, I guess you could go Kurosawa, Bergman, or Tarkovsky instead.
Fellini’s early run, from say “La Strada” through to “8 1/2” is shockingly good.
After that he went a bit mad, although “Amarcord” is also sheer genius.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
We don't adjust visual art, music or literature 'for age', so why films?
We do, otherwise so much really old stuff - and often the same old stuff - wouldn't be always included in 'top tens'. Like with sport. We adjust for age. Give it its due regard. Eg prime Pele wouldn't get in the Man City team. Prime Rod Laver couldn't take a set of today's world number 20. Yet we - rightly imo - consider both to be all time greats. It's a bit different in the arts but not totally different. This factor still applies.
Re Pele and Rod Laver, you should allow for the fact that the games have changed. E.g. Pele played with leather footballs, and super-sized and -strung rackets weren't available to Laver.
Yes. And similar with some arts. The kit gets better. Eg with film.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
No accounting for what will strike a chord sometimes. There were many young adult fantasy series before JK (and a great many more afterwards), some no doubt seen as superior in many ways. None are likely to ever be as as big as hers, but the quality level certainly doesn't determine which ones succeed - plenty of little known gems, and bland successes (its sometimes argued blandness helps with mega successes in films etc, to have global appeal).
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
I’d say the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy is far and away better than Harry Potter, but that was written long before the boom in fantasy.
True - but fantasy was always a massive seller, in a background way. In many houses where you don't see books in general, you often saw a pile of thick fantasy series books.
This is why, every now and again, the studio execs would try and make films out of it. Harry Potter caught the wave of high end special effects of the type required being possible and cheap enough.
Pre-Lord of the Rings, Epic Fantasy was a very guilty pleasure.
Fantasy was okay if it was comic (like the Hobbit) or entertaining sword and sorcery (like Robert Howard, or Fritz Leiber). The idea that it might be *literature* however, was heresy.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
First is Hitchcock,
Indeed.
The third, Michael Powell.
Ha no. The third is not British.
Of course, I was separately trying to think of the best ever BRITISH film and it is hard not to choose the “Red Shoes”. Totally ripped off of course by Aaronofsky for “Black Swan”.
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
The number of trains running on HS2 will be almost halved and services will travel more slowly in a proposed shake-up of the £72bn line as ministers scramble to save money.
Whitehall officials are considering reducing the number of trains from 18 to 10 an hour, insiders said.
Meanwhile, plans to run services at up to 360 km/h (224 mph) are in jeopardy as officials weigh whether to reduce maximum speeds.
The proposals are among a series of cost-cutting measures under discussion as part of an overhaul codenamed Project Silverlight and Operation Blue Diamond, as ministers grapple with huge inflationary pressures on Britain’s biggest infrastructure project.
The Department for Transport on Tuesday refused to rule out reducing the frequency and speed of HS2 trains.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
First is Hitchcock,
Indeed.
The third, Michael Powell.
Ha no. The third is not British.
Of course, I was separately trying to think of the best ever BRITISH film and it is hard not to choose the “Red Shoes”. Totally ripped off of course by Aaronofsky for “Black Swan”.
Kurosawa ?
But films, like all art, are made for different reasons to achieve different thing, appeal to different audiences, with different tastes. And vive le differences.
So we can have personal favourite film makers and films, but there can’t be bests of all time.
I like the way Tarkovsky made films. But at the same time won’t expect his movies to be high in viewer polls. But that’s not the point of “best filmmaker” - they are good how they influence and inspire other film makers.
Having best of all time lists gets even more silly when you move into music, all the different genres to choose from cant sit side by side on the same list. And again, what is interesting is what influences and inspires, not so much it’s commercial success. The Velvet Underground album with banana on the front was neither a critical or commercial success on its release, but it certainly inspired and influenced.
The number of trains running on HS2 will be almost halved and services will travel more slowly in a proposed shake-up of the £72bn line as ministers scramble to save money.
Whitehall officials are considering reducing the number of trains from 18 to 10 an hour, insiders said.
Meanwhile, plans to run services at up to 360 km/h (224 mph) are in jeopardy as officials weigh whether to reduce maximum speeds.
The proposals are among a series of cost-cutting measures under discussion as part of an overhaul codenamed Project Silverlight and Operation Blue Diamond, as ministers grapple with huge inflationary pressures on Britain’s biggest infrastructure project.
The Department for Transport on Tuesday refused to rule out reducing the frequency and speed of HS2 trains.
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
"Under Siege" - the best Steven Seagal film ever made!
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
No accounting for what will strike a chord sometimes. There were many young adult fantasy series before JK (and a great many more afterwards), some no doubt seen as superior in many ways. None are likely to ever be as as big as hers, but the quality level certainly doesn't determine which ones succeed - plenty of little known gems, and bland successes (its sometimes argued blandness helps with mega successes in films etc, to have global appeal).
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
I’d say the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy is far and away better than Harry Potter, but that was written long before the boom in fantasy.
True - but fantasy was always a massive seller, in a background way. In many houses where you don't see books in general, you often saw a pile of thick fantasy series books.
This is why, every now and again, the studio execs would try and make films out of it. Harry Potter caught the wave of high end special effects of the type required being possible and cheap enough.
Pre-Lord of the Rings, Epic Fantasy was a very guilty pleasure.
Fantasy was okay if it was comic (like the Hobbit) or entertaining sword and sorcery (like Robert Howard, or Fritz Leiber). The idea that it might be *literature* however, was heresy.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
JK Rowling deserves a lot of praise for the way she has consistently stood up to the mob in the face of death threats, threats of violence and attempting to silence her. She is the standout person for free speech and expression. She cannot be silenced or cancelled and she uses that power to enable others to speak out and tell their own stories.
A true inspiration and whatever royalties she gets from this game are well deserved.
Yes. Having daughters I was obliged to read the books, and attend the films (though I went on strike with the latter in the end). The first four or so books were good, though forgettable, fun. After that it got unnecessarily complicated and by the end I gave up the will to live. Just too long, and in the end absorbed. I think there is a chance she will not still be in the pantheon in a few decades.
As a spokesperson for proper feminism SFAICS she can do no wrong. Good for her.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
I think that every film cliche was once a bright innovation, so the brilliance of CK is not so recognised. Its innovative plotting and tracking shots are now normal. Critics though are more likely to understand its significance so much more than a more recent audience.
I think Jeanne Dielman is something that the attention deficit modern age struggles with. We bore much more easily, and are less open to building ominous scripting. We want instant in your face action.
That sounds like total bollocks to me. There's definitely a market for slower, more contemplative movies even today. People enjoy longform content online in loads of ways as well, they are not incapable of enjoying slowly paced movies. It's just saying that people didn't 'get' a movie and that's their fault. Some movies won't appeal to some people by virtue of style or story, and that's fine, but people are often able to see the merits of a film even if it was not for them, and not destined for mass success. It'd be an excuse to use that approach.
As for Citizen Kane, I cannot judge it as I have not seen it, but I think the idea all the film critics who put it high on their list do so because they have a genuinely indepth knowledge of its merits, as they might have existed at the time for innovative filmmaking techniques, seems very optimistic. I don't think critics adjust their position on whether they think Cannibal Holocaust is a good movie or not because of its significance as a found footage movie. They judge it and other movies based on whether they think it is good on its own merits. CK apparently is still compelling for many people.
I am just saying that fashions change. For example I far prefer the 1930 version of All Quiet on the Western Front to the current Netflix version. Sure, the original looks quite stagey and overacted to modern eyes, but I think that it's significance as the archetype of so many modern war films, far outweighs its faults.
All too often special effects make movies worse, being a substitute for a decent script and characterisation. Clearly something else that I am out of tune with modern times with.
There are still great films being made. Only you're not likely to find them at the Multiplex. I saw Aftersun about three weeks' ago - it's still haunting me. The Quiet Girl and The Worst Person in the World were also excellent films I've seen in the last 12 months.
I agree. Aftersun is a film that sticks with you for a long time, and haunting is a very apposite descriptor. A very rare film that impacts so much as to make you recall conversations of decades ago and reinterpret them. Quite slow and character driven rather than plot. It is the atmosphere that makes it.
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
JK Rowling deserves a lot of praise for the way she has consistently stood up to the mob in the face of death threats, threats of violence and attempting to silence her. She is the standout person for free speech and expression. She cannot be silenced or cancelled and she uses that power to enable others to speak out and tell their own stories.
A true inspiration and whatever royalties she gets from this game are well deserved.
Yes. Having daughters I was obliged to read the books, and attend the films (though I went on strike with the latter in the end). The first four or so books were good, though forgettable, fun. After that it got unnecessarily complicated and by the end I gave up the will to live. Just too long, and in the end absorbed. I think there is a chance she will not still be in the pantheon in a few decades.
As a spokesperson for proper feminism SFAICS she can do no wrong. Good for her.
I would say HP went downhill with the Goblet of Fire. A decent editor would have cut back the verbiage and kept the fun.
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
For a war film, I think I prefer Cross of Iron.
For you war film buffs, what do you make of the All Quiet adaptation currently leading the way at the Oscar’s?
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
For a war film, I think I prefer Cross of Iron.
For you war film buffs, what do you make of the All Quiet adaptation currently leading the way at the Oscar’s?
Snotty film critics (ie me) disdain the Oscars. I haven’t seen it, but the general opinion I’m picking up from fellow snotties is that it’s sensationalist shit.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
We don't adjust visual art, music or literature 'for age', so why films?
We do, otherwise so much really old stuff - and often the same old stuff - wouldn't be always included in 'top tens'. Like with sport. We adjust for age. Give it its due regard. Eg prime Pele wouldn't get in the Man City team. Prime Rod Laver couldn't take a set of today's world number 20. Yet we - rightly imo - consider both to be all time greats. It's a bit different in the arts but not totally different. This factor still applies.
Re Pele and Rod Laver, you should allow for the fact that the games have changed. E.g. Pele played with leather footballs, and super-sized and -strung rackets weren't available to Laver.
It’s impossible to compare eras really, but I believe that the greats of sport, had they been born into different eras would still have excelled. Matt Syed bangs on about 10,000 hours of training, and that’s certainly a part of it, but elite sports stars also have genetic advantages.
Don5 forget that players drive each other to greater levels. Andy Murray would have won more Slams in any other era than the Federer/Nadal/Jokovic nightmare he found himself in. But ironically he became a far better player by necessity to try to live with them.
The much quoted 10,000 hour "rule" is absolutely without proper evidence.
Yes. It’s a conveniently round number too, like 10,000 steps a day, 5 a day fruit and veg, and many many more things plucked from the air. I think my favourite is the number of glasses of water you supposedly need. Utter garbage, yet most of my students seem surgically attached to water bottles.
10,000 hours at least sounds plausible, in the sense that it feels right that you need to put in a lot of time to become an expert at something. The 8 glasses of water a day thing doesn't even sound right to me - that's an awful lot of fluid if you are not feeling thirsty.
We are limited by our genetic inheritance. Take running. I used to train 3 or 4 days a week, had a resting heart rate around 50 bpm and was pretty fit. Yet my fastest half marathon time is 2 h 14 minutes. Risibly slow. My best 5k was 26 minutes. The WR is half that. I simply do not have the ‘talent’ no matter how well I trained. It’s the same with sports needing coordination and reflex. Facing Joffra Archer hurling 95 mph bouncers needs both good eye sight and fast relexes, plus the ability to project the path of the ball and in built muscle memory from training. Yet Incould net for 10 hours a day for a year and still be shit against his bowling. The ten thousand hours is shorthand for those that making it being obsessed and from an early age. Like Bradman with his stump and golf ball (that may not be totally correct - I can’t recall). But I’m always suspicious of round numbers and with good reason.
The number of trains running on HS2 will be almost halved and services will travel more slowly in a proposed shake-up of the £72bn line as ministers scramble to save money.
Whitehall officials are considering reducing the number of trains from 18 to 10 an hour, insiders said.
Meanwhile, plans to run services at up to 360 km/h (224 mph) are in jeopardy as officials weigh whether to reduce maximum speeds.
The proposals are among a series of cost-cutting measures under discussion as part of an overhaul codenamed Project Silverlight and Operation Blue Diamond, as ministers grapple with huge inflationary pressures on Britain’s biggest infrastructure project.
The Department for Transport on Tuesday refused to rule out reducing the frequency and speed of HS2 trains.
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
"Under Siege" - the best Steven Seagal film ever made!
And an unforgettable pair of tits leaps out in that one too!
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
No accounting for what will strike a chord sometimes. There were many young adult fantasy series before JK (and a great many more afterwards), some no doubt seen as superior in many ways. None are likely to ever be as as big as hers, but the quality level certainly doesn't determine which ones succeed - plenty of little known gems, and bland successes (its sometimes argued blandness helps with mega successes in films etc, to have global appeal).
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
I’d say the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy is far and away better than Harry Potter, but that was written long before the boom in fantasy.
True - but fantasy was always a massive seller, in a background way. In many houses where you don't see books in general, you often saw a pile of thick fantasy series books.
This is why, every now and again, the studio execs would try and make films out of it. Harry Potter caught the wave of high end special effects of the type required being possible and cheap enough.
Pre-Lord of the Rings, Epic Fantasy was a very guilty pleasure.
Fantasy was okay if it was comic (like the Hobbit) or entertaining sword and sorcery (like Robert Howard, or Fritz Leiber). The idea that it might be *literature* however, was heresy.
Has that really changed?
Since Tolkien is now studied academically, yes.
But, it would be difficult to argue that authors like Guy Gavriel Kay, Ursula Le Guin, or Kazuo Ishiguro don't write literature.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
First is Hitchcock,
Indeed.
The third, Michael Powell.
Ha no. The third is not British.
Of course, I was separately trying to think of the best ever BRITISH film and it is hard not to choose the “Red Shoes”. Totally ripped off of course by Aaronofsky for “Black Swan”.
Kurosawa ?
But films, like all art, are made for different reasons to achieve different thing, appeal to different audiences, with different tastes. And vive le differences.
So we can have personal favourite film makers and films, but there can’t be bests of all time.
I like the way Tarkovsky made films. But at the same time won’t expect his movies to be high in viewer polls. But that’s not the point of “best filmmaker” - they are good how they influence and inspire other film makers.
Having best of all time lists gets even more silly when you move into music, all the different genres to choose from cant sit side by side on the same list. And again, what is interesting is what influences and inspires, not so much it’s commercial success. The Velvet Underground album with banana on the front was neither a critical or commercial success on its release, but it certainly inspired and influenced.
I don’t disagree. I was attempting to guess Gardenwalker’s picks, though I’ll grant we have some overlap. Hitchcock, Kurosawa and Powell certainly.
I admire Kubrick, but don’t really love some of his stuff. Strangelove is fantastic.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
JK Rowling deserves a lot of praise for the way she has consistently stood up to the mob in the face of death threats, threats of violence and attempting to silence her. She is the standout person for free speech and expression. She cannot be silenced or cancelled and she uses that power to enable others to speak out and tell their own stories.
A true inspiration and whatever royalties she gets from this game are well deserved.
Yes. Having daughters I was obliged to read the books, and attend the films (though I went on strike with the latter in the end). The first four or so books were good, though forgettable, fun. After that it got unnecessarily complicated and by the end I gave up the will to live. Just too long, and in the end absorbed. I think there is a chance she will not still be in the pantheon in a few decades.
As a spokesperson for proper feminism SFAICS she can do no wrong. Good for her.
I would say HP went downhill with the Goblet of Fire. A decent editor would have cut back the verbiage and kept the fun.
The great sin of fantasy writers is bloat. Once a writer gets really successful she can tell the editors to get lost.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
First is Hitchcock,
Indeed.
The third, Michael Powell.
Ha no. The third is not British.
Of course, I was separately trying to think of the best ever BRITISH film and it is hard not to choose the “Red Shoes”. Totally ripped off of course by Aaronofsky for “Black Swan”.
Kurosawa ?
But films, like all art, are made for different reasons to achieve different thing, appeal to different audiences, with different tastes. And vive le differences.
So we can have personal favourite film makers and films, but there can’t be bests of all time.
I like the way Tarkovsky made films. But at the same time won’t expect his movies to be high in viewer polls. But that’s not the point of “best filmmaker” - they are good how they influence and inspire other film makers.
Having best of all time lists gets even more silly when you move into music, all the different genres to choose from cant sit side by side on the same list. And again, what is interesting is what influences and inspires, not so much it’s commercial success. The Velvet Underground album with banana on the front was neither a critical or commercial success on its release, but it certainly inspired and influenced.
I don’t disagree. I was attempting to guess Gardenwalker’s picks, though I’ll grant we have some overlap. Hitchcock, Kurosawa and Powell certainly.
I admire Kubrick, but don’t really love some of his stuff.
The classic criticism of Kubrick is that his works lack heart. He puts his characters into a kind of airless glass cage and pins them down to be examined.
But I like that. I go elsewhere for heart (like Fellini, aha).
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
No accounting for what will strike a chord sometimes. There were many young adult fantasy series before JK (and a great many more afterwards), some no doubt seen as superior in many ways. None are likely to ever be as as big as hers, but the quality level certainly doesn't determine which ones succeed - plenty of little known gems, and bland successes (its sometimes argued blandness helps with mega successes in films etc, to have global appeal).
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
I’d say the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy is far and away better than Harry Potter, but that was written long before the boom in fantasy.
True - but fantasy was always a massive seller, in a background way. In many houses where you don't see books in general, you often saw a pile of thick fantasy series books.
This is why, every now and again, the studio execs would try and make films out of it. Harry Potter caught the wave of high end special effects of the type required being possible and cheap enough.
Pre-Lord of the Rings, Epic Fantasy was a very guilty pleasure.
Fantasy was okay if it was comic (like the Hobbit) or entertaining sword and sorcery (like Robert Howard, or Fritz Leiber). The idea that it might be *literature* however, was heresy.
Has that really changed?
Since Tolkien is now studied academically, yes.
But, it would be difficult to argue that authors like Guy Gavriel Kay, Ursula Le Guin, or Kazuo Ishiguro don't write literature.
Still feels very much like the exception. The average fantasy novellist versus the average 'normal' novellist I reckon would get less respect. Just my gut feeling, though it is a lot better being a nerd now.
You still sometimes see (even used to from authors themselves) the 'It's not really fantasy' defence, as if quality means it cannot be.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
Interesting to watch the progression.
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films. 2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions. 3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
No accounting for what will strike a chord sometimes. There were many young adult fantasy series before JK (and a great many more afterwards), some no doubt seen as superior in many ways. None are likely to ever be as as big as hers, but the quality level certainly doesn't determine which ones succeed - plenty of little known gems, and bland successes (its sometimes argued blandness helps with mega successes in films etc, to have global appeal).
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
I’d say the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy is far and away better than Harry Potter, but that was written long before the boom in fantasy.
True - but fantasy was always a massive seller, in a background way. In many houses where you don't see books in general, you often saw a pile of thick fantasy series books.
This is why, every now and again, the studio execs would try and make films out of it. Harry Potter caught the wave of high end special effects of the type required being possible and cheap enough.
Pre-Lord of the Rings, Epic Fantasy was a very guilty pleasure.
Fantasy was okay if it was comic (like the Hobbit) or entertaining sword and sorcery (like Robert Howard, or Fritz Leiber). The idea that it might be *literature* however, was heresy.
Has that really changed?
Since Tolkien is now studied academically, yes.
But, it would be difficult to argue that authors like Guy Gavriel Kay, Ursula Le Guin, or Kazuo Ishiguro don't write literature.
Still feels very much like the exception. The average fantasy novellist versus the average 'normal' novellist I reckon would get less respect. Just my gut feeling, though it is a lot better being a nerd now.
Of course this true.
It’s because much genre fiction - quite naturally - has no artistic ambition. Same goes for “romance” (but is Pride and Prejudice romance?) and “thrillers” (but is “Crime and Punishment a thriller?).
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
I don't know if I would have each of those as the best in its category, but what Kubrick managed was to make exceptional films in so many genres.
Breaker Morant is perhaps better than Paths of Glory in its rumination on the ethics of war.
As a horror, I find "Awake in Fright" hard to beat, but I do have a rather soft spot for Australian film. The craziness and horror sucks in the main protagonist so completely that it is another film that sticks in the mind.
The 1967 "Night of the Living Dead" is perhaps the film that most disturbed my sleep when I first saw it as a teenager in the Seventies.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
First is Hitchcock,
Indeed.
The third, Michael Powell.
Ha no. The third is not British.
Of course, I was separately trying to think of the best ever BRITISH film and it is hard not to choose the “Red Shoes”. Totally ripped off of course by Aaronofsky for “Black Swan”.
Kurosawa ?
But films, like all art, are made for different reasons to achieve different thing, appeal to different audiences, with different tastes. And vive le differences.
So we can have personal favourite film makers and films, but there can’t be bests of all time.
I like the way Tarkovsky made films. But at the same time won’t expect his movies to be high in viewer polls. But that’s not the point of “best filmmaker” - they are good how they influence and inspire other film makers.
Having best of all time lists gets even more silly when you move into music, all the different genres to choose from cant sit side by side on the same list. And again, what is interesting is what influences and inspires, not so much it’s commercial success. The Velvet Underground album with banana on the front was neither a critical or commercial success on its release, but it certainly inspired and influenced.
I don’t disagree. I was attempting to guess Gardenwalker’s picks, though I’ll grant we have some overlap. Hitchcock, Kurosawa and Powell certainly.
I admire Kubrick, but don’t really love some of his stuff. Strangelove is fantastic.
Just on Powell (and Pressburger) again, I think “A Canterbury Tale” perfectly expresses a form of English-ness to me. Perhaps it is a form which has died out, I don’t know. It’s not a perfect film, just encapsulates those sweet qualities that Santayana noted in his famous quote about the Empire.
Government ministers should be forced to watch it.
Surely every film should get a better rating from the audience than from critics? The audience is self selecting; those who think it will be a pile of shite don't go to watch it. However, critics are paid to watch it, and can't avoid it however bad they think it will be.
I suffered through about half of this film based on rave reviews from various critics. I should have trusted the viewing public instead.
And yes, there is a lot of potato peeling in it. Particularly well done in the second act.
A really interesting film, though builds very slowly.
The fact that Citizen Kane comes in the top five of every critic's 'best film of all time' list, tells you all you need to know about the rank stupidity of film critics.
Thing is, if you adjust for age - since films like most everything else are better now than they used to be - then CK really does belong in that top 5.
I thinnk films are one thing that are definitely not better than they used to be. Too many filmmakers have given up telling a story, in favour of flashy special effects.
When was the golden era? I would say the 1980s (late 70s to beginning of 90s). The sheer range of stories and genres. Old enough to have the originality, storytelling and pacing of the classics, new enough to get the special effects, a more familiar modern setting, and more naturalistic acting.
This is an odd comment.
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
First is Hitchcock,
Indeed.
The third, Michael Powell.
Ha no. The third is not British.
Of course, I was separately trying to think of the best ever BRITISH film and it is hard not to choose the “Red Shoes”. Totally ripped off of course by Aaronofsky for “Black Swan”.
Kurosawa ?
But films, like all art, are made for different reasons to achieve different thing, appeal to different audiences, with different tastes. And vive le differences.
So we can have personal favourite film makers and films, but there can’t be bests of all time.
I like the way Tarkovsky made films. But at the same time won’t expect his movies to be high in viewer polls. But that’s not the point of “best filmmaker” - they are good how they influence and inspire other film makers.
Having best of all time lists gets even more silly when you move into music, all the different genres to choose from cant sit side by side on the same list. And again, what is interesting is what influences and inspires, not so much it’s commercial success. The Velvet Underground album with banana on the front was neither a critical or commercial success on its release, but it certainly inspired and influenced.
I don’t disagree. I was attempting to guess Gardenwalker’s picks, though I’ll grant we have some overlap. Hitchcock, Kurosawa and Powell certainly.
I admire Kubrick, but don’t really love some of his stuff. Strangelove is fantastic.
What are we calling a great film maker? Directing the actor, framing the shot, hitting the budget supplied so it gets finished?
There are some people who write a lot of the original screenplays they direct themselves, and get a claim for both. Kudos to them, that’s great at two art forms.
Makavejev for example wrote some interesting screenplay, had a painterly eye with filming, but couldn’t direct actors.
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
I don't know if I would have each of those as the best in its category, but what Kubrick managed was to make exceptional films in so many genres.
Breaker Morant is perhaps better than Paths of Glory in its rumination on the ethics of war.
As a horror, I find "Awake in Fright" hard to beat, but I do have a rather soft spot for Australian film. The craziness and horror sucks in the main protagonist so completely that it is another film that sticks in the mind.
The 1967 "Night of the Living Dead" is perhaps the film that most disturbed my sleep when I first saw it as a teenager in the Seventies.
Awake in Fright is fucking mental. But again, it says something about Australia which no other art form is going to go near.
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
"Under Siege" - the best Steven Seagal film ever made!
And an unforgettable pair of tits leaps out in that one too!
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
I don't know if I would have each of those as the best in its category, but what Kubrick managed was to make exceptional films in so many genres.
Breaker Morant is perhaps better than Paths of Glory in its rumination on the ethics of war.
As a horror, I find "Awake in Fright" hard to beat, but I do have a rather soft spot for Australian film. The craziness and horror sucks in the main protagonist so completely that it is another film that sticks in the mind.
The 1967 "Night of the Living Dead" is perhaps the film that most disturbed my sleep when I first saw it as a teenager in the Seventies.
Awake in Fright is fucking mental. But again, it says something about Australia which no other art form is going to go near.
You can't escape the Yabba. Have a drink you bastard.
I remember a weekend in West Victoria in a small town near the Grampians that started in a pub with some travelling sheep shearers and developed on not dissimilar lines of matey aggression.
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
For a war film, I think I prefer Cross of Iron.
For you war film buffs, what do you make of the All Quiet adaptation currently leading the way at the Oscar’s?
Snotty film critics (ie me) disdain the Oscars. I haven’t seen it, but the general opinion I’m picking up from fellow snotties is that it’s sensationalist shit.
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
I don't know if I would have each of those as the best in its category, but what Kubrick managed was to make exceptional films in so many genres.
Breaker Morant is perhaps better than Paths of Glory in its rumination on the ethics of war.
As a horror, I find "Awake in Fright" hard to beat, but I do have a rather soft spot for Australian film. The craziness and horror sucks in the main protagonist so completely that it is another film that sticks in the mind.
The 1967 "Night of the Living Dead" is perhaps the film that most disturbed my sleep when I first saw it as a teenager in the Seventies.
Awake in Fright is fucking mental. But again, it says something about Australia which no other art form is going to go near.
You can't escape the Yabba. Have a drink you bastard.
I remember a weekend in West Victoria in a small town near the Grampians that started in a pub with some travelling sheep shearers and developed on not dissimilar lines of matey aggression.
Been a while since I saw either, but it’s a far more disturbing film than Deliverance, with which it should be compared.
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
For a war film, I think I prefer Cross of Iron.
For you war film buffs, what do you make of the All Quiet adaptation currently leading the way at the Oscar’s?
Snotty film critics (ie me) disdain the Oscars. I haven’t seen it, but the general opinion I’m picking up from fellow snotties is that it’s sensationalist shit.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
JK Rowling deserves a lot of praise for the way she has consistently stood up to the mob in the face of death threats, threats of violence and attempting to silence her. She is the standout person for free speech and expression. She cannot be silenced or cancelled and she uses that power to enable others to speak out and tell their own stories.
A true inspiration and whatever royalties she gets from this game are well deserved.
Yes. Having daughters I was obliged to read the books, and attend the films (though I went on strike with the latter in the end). The first four or so books were good, though forgettable, fun. After that it got unnecessarily complicated and by the end I gave up the will to live. Just too long, and in the end absorbed. I think there is a chance she will not still be in the pantheon in a few decades.
As a spokesperson for proper feminism SFAICS she can do no wrong. Good for her.
I would say HP went downhill with the Goblet of Fire. A decent editor would have cut back the verbiage and kept the fun.
I think the point is that after 4 the fun goes away because Voldemort is back. It's supposed to have a tone shift to being miserable, this also reflects school kids finding fifth form and sixth form less fun than they did before as they grow up and take less joy from smaller things in life.
Speaking as someone who read it as it came out and did so at school age or recently out of school I completely understood the tone shift from the 4th book to the 5th book. In 4th form school was still fun, objectively, in 5th form it was all exams, teachers who seeming wanted you to fail and trying to get with girls from the girls school. The fifth book suffers from being too long, not because of the tone shift to being less fun.
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
I don't know if I would have each of those as the best in its category, but what Kubrick managed was to make exceptional films in so many genres.
Breaker Morant is perhaps better than Paths of Glory in its rumination on the ethics of war.
As a horror, I find "Awake in Fright" hard to beat, but I do have a rather soft spot for Australian film. The craziness and horror sucks in the main protagonist so completely that it is another film that sticks in the mind.
The 1967 "Night of the Living Dead" is perhaps the film that most disturbed my sleep when I first saw it as a teenager in the Seventies.
Awake in Fright is fucking mental. But again, it says something about Australia which no other art form is going to go near.
You can't escape the Yabba. Have a drink you bastard.
I remember a weekend in West Victoria in a small town near the Grampians that started in a pub with some travelling sheep shearers and developed on not dissimilar lines of matey aggression.
Been a while since I saw either, but it’s a far more disturbing film than Deliverance, with which it should be compared.
I really rate "Once Were Warriors" too. Is it the best NZ film?
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
For a war film, I think I prefer Cross of Iron.
For you war film buffs, what do you make of the All Quiet adaptation currently leading the way at the Oscar’s?
Snotty film critics (ie me) disdain the Oscars. I haven’t seen it, but the general opinion I’m picking up from fellow snotties is that it’s sensationalist shit.
Really? That bad eh?
I thought it was good in many ways. The first thing that struck me is how it looked - like peaking through a window into history rather than watching a film.
But a lot of the films you list were Oscar successes? Maybe the idea things made today can’t be as good as anything made in the classic era of the past when all the best movies were made, by long dead geniuses? Time makes something once chic into vintage. (What is chic anyway?)
I thought the opening and other parts (like the chapel) of David Lowery The Green Knight very Tarkovsky (but I didn’t like the screenplay).
The difference between us maybe I see film makers today standing on the shoulders of your giants from the past?
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
I don't know if I would have each of those as the best in its category, but what Kubrick managed was to make exceptional films in so many genres.
Breaker Morant is perhaps better than Paths of Glory in its rumination on the ethics of war.
As a horror, I find "Awake in Fright" hard to beat, but I do have a rather soft spot for Australian film. The craziness and horror sucks in the main protagonist so completely that it is another film that sticks in the mind.
The 1967 "Night of the Living Dead" is perhaps the film that most disturbed my sleep when I first saw it as a teenager in the Seventies.
Awake in Fright is fucking mental. But again, it says something about Australia which no other art form is going to go near.
You can't escape the Yabba. Have a drink you bastard.
I remember a weekend in West Victoria in a small town near the Grampians that started in a pub with some travelling sheep shearers and developed on not dissimilar lines of matey aggression.
Been a while since I saw either, but it’s a far more disturbing film than Deliverance, with which it should be compared.
I really rate "Once Were Warriors" too. Is it the best NZ film?
Probably.
Although I would also make claims for “An Angel At My Table” (Jane Campion) and “Sleeping Dogs”, which launched Sam Neil’s career.
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
"Under Siege" - the best Steven Seagal film ever made!
And an unforgettable pair of tits leaps out in that one too!
One’s Seagal, who’s the other ? Oh, I see.
😇 . .
One thing I have a talent for is spotting actresses on the way up and predicting their success. Like Alicia Vikander before anyone else had heard of her, before she did anything in English. In much the same way I am now tipping Julia Schlaepfer.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
JK Rowling deserves a lot of praise for the way she has consistently stood up to the mob in the face of death threats, threats of violence and attempting to silence her. She is the standout person for free speech and expression. She cannot be silenced or cancelled and she uses that power to enable others to speak out and tell their own stories.
A true inspiration and whatever royalties she gets from this game are well deserved.
Yes. Having daughters I was obliged to read the books, and attend the films (though I went on strike with the latter in the end). The first four or so books were good, though forgettable, fun. After that it got unnecessarily complicated and by the end I gave up the will to live. Just too long, and in the end absorbed. I think there is a chance she will not still be in the pantheon in a few decades.
As a spokesperson for proper feminism SFAICS she can do no wrong. Good for her.
I would say HP went downhill with the Goblet of Fire. A decent editor would have cut back the verbiage and kept the fun.
I think the point is that after 4 the fun goes away because Voldemort is back. It's supposed to have a tone shift to being miserable, this also reflects school kids finding fifth form and sixth form less fun than they did before as they grow up and take less joy from smaller things in life.
Speaking as someone who read it as it came out and did so at school age or recently out of school I completely understood the tone shift from the 4th book to the 5th book. In 4th form school was still fun, objectively, in 5th form it was all exams, teachers who seeming wanted you to fail and trying to get with girls from the girls school. The fifth book suffers from being too long, not because of the tone shift to being less fun.
Order of the Phoenix is one of the best Harry Potter novels. Half Blood Prince, on the other hand, is kind of shit.
One of my old colleagues has suggested to me that Hogwarts Legacy is on course to do over $1bn in revenue not including add on sales. I hope companies learn that ignoring insane activists and the twitter mob is worth it. WB had a choice a few years ago to bow down and accept that they would never use the Harry Potter IP again or just ignore it all and continue anyway. They chose the latter and are about to have one of the best selling games ever not made by Sony or Nintendo and they have revitalised their premier brand licence after two or three flops in movies.
It's about time that more companies stop listening to the loud screeching and just get on and make content and products for the majority who enjoy it.
I wonder how many people bought it precisely because Woko Haram pronounced a fatwa against it.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
JK Rowling deserves a lot of praise for the way she has consistently stood up to the mob in the face of death threats, threats of violence and attempting to silence her. She is the standout person for free speech and expression. She cannot be silenced or cancelled and she uses that power to enable others to speak out and tell their own stories.
A true inspiration and whatever royalties she gets from this game are well deserved.
Yes. Having daughters I was obliged to read the books, and attend the films (though I went on strike with the latter in the end). The first four or so books were good, though forgettable, fun. After that it got unnecessarily complicated and by the end I gave up the will to live. Just too long, and in the end absorbed. I think there is a chance she will not still be in the pantheon in a few decades.
As a spokesperson for proper feminism SFAICS she can do no wrong. Good for her.
I would say HP went downhill with the Goblet of Fire. A decent editor would have cut back the verbiage and kept the fun.
I think the point is that after 4 the fun goes away because Voldemort is back. It's supposed to have a tone shift to being miserable, this also reflects school kids finding fifth form and sixth form less fun than they did before as they grow up and take less joy from smaller things in life.
Speaking as someone who read it as it came out and did so at school age or recently out of school I completely understood the tone shift from the 4th book to the 5th book. In 4th form school was still fun, objectively, in 5th form it was all exams, teachers who seeming wanted you to fail and trying to get with girls from the girls school. The fifth book suffers from being too long, not because of the tone shift to being less fun.
Order of the Phoenix is one of the best Harry Potter novels. Half Blood Prince, on the other hand, is kind of shit.
Kubrick is the absolute master. He didn’t make a single shit film. Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror. “Dr Strangelove” the best comedy. “2001” the best sci-fi. “Paths of Glory” the best war film. “Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
I don't know if I would have each of those as the best in its category, but what Kubrick managed was to make exceptional films in so many genres.
Breaker Morant is perhaps better than Paths of Glory in its rumination on the ethics of war.
As a horror, I find "Awake in Fright" hard to beat, but I do have a rather soft spot for Australian film. The craziness and horror sucks in the main protagonist so completely that it is another film that sticks in the mind.
The 1967 "Night of the Living Dead" is perhaps the film that most disturbed my sleep when I first saw it as a teenager in the Seventies.
Awake in Fright is fucking mental. But again, it says something about Australia which no other art form is going to go near.
You can't escape the Yabba. Have a drink you bastard.
I remember a weekend in West Victoria in a small town near the Grampians that started in a pub with some travelling sheep shearers and developed on not dissimilar lines of matey aggression.
Been a while since I saw either, but it’s a far more disturbing film than Deliverance, with which it should be compared.
I really rate "Once Were Warriors" too. Is it the best NZ film?
Probably.
Although I would also make claims for “An Angel At My Table” (Jane Campion) and “Sleeping Dogs”, which launched Sam Neil’s career.
Comments
I agree with you. Do it right or do not bother doing it at all.
"And if we're still dealing with systemic racism in this country that is leading us to the loss of a Tyre Nichols, "
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64557717
5 black guys beating another black guy to death is due to systemic racism...its a view I suppose.
The twatters should stick to soft targets.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/approval/kamala-harris/
1) Try and block JKR from her own creation. Certain success with respect to the films.
2) Following the discovery, that due to intelligent lawyering, she hadn't given up the rights to almost anything, they tried to get the studio to sue her to "stop damaging the brand". By having opinions.
3) This failed, so they are now trying to "cancel" the entire Harry Potter universe. It's sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist etc etc.
The whole Harry Potter thing seems strange to me. A collection of books, reasonably well written. There are many like it in the SF/Fantasy section of bookshops. Yet it exploded onto the scene and captured the imaginations of many, many millions. And continues to do so.
A true inspiration and whatever royalties she gets from this game are well deserved.
The Daily Show produces ‘hilarious compilation’ of Kamala Harris gaffes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8PIqNdGIoE
Senior management have this utopic view that groups of people will spontaneously self-organise into working patterns naturally - e.g. there's a crucial crunch period that needs in-person contact, or a new person joins and everyone comes in for a bit to get them started and up to speed, so everyone will volunteer to come in for those things on agreed days.
Reality is neither of these things happen, >90% of people will just stay WFH >90% of the time (mostly because it's convenient but in a non-trivial number of cases because it's easy to hide, as others have said). And management are too afraid to basically tell people to come in, even if it's only the odd day here or there- so crucial crunch period gets buggered over by no-one collaborating well and new person gets buggered over by not embedding into the team and learning new stuff just by osmosis.
Don5 forget that players drive each other to greater levels. Andy Murray would have won more Slams in any other era than the Federer/Nadal/Jokovic nightmare he found himself in. But ironically he became a far better player by necessity to try to live with them.
https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/landtage/berlin.htm
The 80s were considered (by critics and indeed me) a kind of nadir after the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. In the footsteps of Jaws etc, film-makers eschewed the “American New Wave” for multi-screen special effects.
The 90s saw a modest return to “indie” (and therefore, better) film-making.
Netflix and Covid look to have really damaged film-making, though. Of course good stuff is still being made, but something has definitely gone missing. (The idea that films are “better” today, as someone posted, is quite bizarre).
As regards to “Best Film”, it is certainly not Jeanne Dielman, who only reached #1 in the Sight and Sound due to a kind of structural voting failure.
It is kind of silly I suppose to think any film can be #1. Citizen Kane earns its place in any top #50, though, for its glorious combination of cinematography, script, acting and a universal story of ambition, greed, and nostalgia.
It is generally assumed that the best film-making in history has come from the USA and France. Which is true in the round. Yet one of the top 3 best directors ever was British (albeit mostly working in Hollywood), and one of the others spent most of his career in Britain (albeit a U.S. native).
I’ll leave you to work out who these are, and indeed my third pick, who is neither American nor French.
It's not luck exactly, she had to work hard and famously was rejected plenty of times, but when her moment came it took off amazingly.
Raised by two Conservative Party members but in 9 years have yet to vote Tory.
I have my idea what the Conservative Party should be, and this is not it. The Party always stood for opening up markets, helping business, sound finance and growth - not hostile to a public sector but through sound finance and growth and no debt repayments actually providing the best foundation for providing the best funding to public services.
Classic Conservativism always had a liberal - in the old fashioned, tolerant sense which believes in freedom, rights and responsibility - so Being liberal is at the heart of being a true Conservative, and makes the difference between them and of what is to the right of them.
The Conservative Party have committed self mutilation in the name of Brexit. Boris extermination of the life long liberal conservatives MPs over one vote, after all his own and friends rebelling was disgusting.
I have as yet to vote Conservative in my life, and have no plans to start anytime soon. A vote should be decided not just on what a party is called or stands for, but also on how incompetent and corrupt they currently are. And day after day in this parliament it’s been incompetence and sleaze.
Perfectly normal people have convinced themselves that she is a moral leper. This includes much of the cast of the Harry Potter films.
After this I hope companies rethink their current strategy of bending the knee to these activists giving in. Just tell them to get fucked and do what you were going to do anyway.
I read somewhere that the most popular boycott tweet has about 100k likes, of which a huge proportion will be bots that the activists have running to signal boost their content and agenda but even if we assume all 100k are actual people (and they're not) it still puts it at less than 1% of the total number of buyers this game will have, less than 0.5% I think. Once you strip out bots it will be less than 0.2%, and this is the most high profile campaign they've had in a long time, it is their magnum opus of woke campaigns.
Rishi (and Treasury) simply detest “Levelling Up”. Always have, always will.
In Agile, because you (effectively) volunteer for a series of small tasks, each with a defined amount of work (usually expressed in hours), it is very easy to see who isn't doing work.
My eldest daughter was completely floored by the youngest asking "What is it that she did that is so bad? Describe in detail...."
Of course, I was separately trying to think of the best ever BRITISH film and it is hard not to choose the “Red Shoes”. Totally ripped off of course by Aaronofsky for “Black Swan”.
This is why, every now and again, the studio execs would try and make films out of it. Harry Potter caught the wave of high end special effects of the type required being possible and cheap enough.
You don’t actually read my posts. I’ve never been a leftie!
Polling wise I was right about the mini surge for Sunak early December and that Labour have lost half the “Truss bounce” they got. The joke is you for denying these facts. But it is best to look at longer sequences of polls month to month for movement. I’m not even keen on averaging from wildly differing pollsters, rather pick through 9 polls from same firm for movements. In that sense, since Labours polling crash nothing has happened in the polls, flat for a long time.
Maybe it’s terminology with you, like “what Labour crash in polls?” Truss proper crashed giving Labour a big bounce. To lose half that bounce so quickly before stalemate took over, that can be called a crash, drop, fall. It happened. Get over it.
(Having read both, I think 'The Worst Witch' are actually better books, particularly for younger teens. The good thing about HP is that they 'grow up' with the reader - if you can stop your chid reading them in one year...)
The Usual Suspects, Godfather I and II, Se7en, Scarface (De Palma), The Two Towers, The Empire Strikes Back, From Russia with Love, Dune (Villeneuve), The Wolf of Wall Street, Some Line It Ho.
Klobuchar rising: Leadership path opens for Minnesota Dem
As the Midwesterner joins top party leadership, she could soon face a choice between further testing her clout inside the Capitol and another White House bid.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/07/klobuchar-minnesota-senate-democrats-00081392
Was 'Some like it Ho' a porn parody?
To the list above add Trollope and Pepys. And Chaucer's Prologue - which I feel is the oldest English stuff that can be read straight, with absolute modern immediacy.
Augustine's Confessions is a good older example.
But depending on taste, I guess you could go Kurosawa, Bergman, or Tarkovsky instead.
Fellini’s early run, from say “La Strada” through to “8 1/2” is shockingly good.
After that he went a bit mad, although “Amarcord” is also sheer genius.
Fantasy was okay if it was comic (like the Hobbit) or entertaining sword and sorcery (like Robert Howard, or Fritz Leiber). The idea that it might be *literature* however, was heresy.
Tarkovsky and Wenders also in the mix for me.
He didn’t make a single shit film.
Everyone (maybe not Eyes Wide Shut or Lolita) is a kind of masterpiece.
Also,
“The Shining” may be the best ever horror.
“Dr Strangelove” the best comedy.
“2001” the best sci-fi.
“Paths of Glory” the best war film.
“Barry Lyndon” the best (well, most beautifully shot) period drama.
Astonishing.
And all edited from a house just outside St Albans.
So we can have personal favourite film makers and films, but there can’t be bests of all time.
I like the way Tarkovsky made films. But at the same time won’t expect his movies to be high in viewer polls. But that’s not the point of “best filmmaker” - they are good how they influence and inspire other film makers.
Having best of all time lists gets even more silly when you move into music, all the different genres to choose from cant sit side by side on the same list. And again, what is interesting is what influences and inspires, not so much it’s commercial success. The Velvet Underground album with banana on the front was neither a critical or commercial success on its release, but it certainly inspired and influenced.
As a spokesperson for proper feminism SFAICS she can do no wrong. Good for her.
I haven’t seen it, but the general opinion I’m picking up from fellow snotties is that it’s sensationalist shit.
It’s the same with sports needing coordination and reflex. Facing Joffra Archer hurling 95 mph bouncers needs both good eye sight and fast relexes, plus the ability to project the path of the ball and in built muscle memory from training. Yet Incould net for 10 hours a day for a year and still be shit against his bowling.
The ten thousand hours is shorthand for those that making it being obsessed and from an early age. Like Bradman with his stump and golf ball (that may not be totally correct - I can’t recall). But I’m always suspicious of round numbers and with good reason.
I would rather dedicate the money to reversing a lot of the Beeching cuts - that's levelling up.
But, it would be difficult to argue that authors like Guy Gavriel Kay, Ursula Le Guin, or Kazuo Ishiguro don't write literature.
I was attempting to guess Gardenwalker’s picks, though I’ll grant we have some overlap. Hitchcock, Kurosawa and Powell certainly.
I admire Kubrick, but don’t really love some of his stuff.
Strangelove is fantastic.
But I like that. I go elsewhere for heart (like Fellini, aha).
You still sometimes see (even used to from authors themselves) the 'It's not really fantasy' defence, as if quality means it cannot be.
It’s because much genre fiction - quite naturally - has no artistic ambition. Same goes for “romance” (but is Pride and Prejudice romance?) and “thrillers” (but is “Crime and Punishment a thriller?).
Breaker Morant is perhaps better than Paths of Glory in its rumination on the ethics of war.
As a horror, I find "Awake in Fright" hard to beat, but I do have a rather soft spot for Australian film. The craziness and horror sucks in the main protagonist so completely that it is another film that sticks in the mind.
The 1967 "Night of the Living Dead" is perhaps the film that most disturbed my sleep when I first saw it as a teenager in the Seventies.
Government ministers should be forced to watch it.
There are some people who write a lot of the original screenplays they direct themselves, and get a claim for both. Kudos to them, that’s great at two art forms.
Makavejev for example wrote some interesting screenplay, had a painterly eye with filming, but couldn’t direct actors.
But again, it says something about Australia which no other art form is going to go near.
Oh, I see.
I remember a weekend in West Victoria in a small town near the Grampians that started in a pub with some travelling sheep shearers and developed on not dissimilar lines of matey aggression.
The German critics are not keen:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jan/27/oscar-all-quiet-on-the-western-front-germany-critics
Some of their criticisms sound well founded.
Speaking as someone who read it as it came out and did so at school age or recently out of school I completely understood the tone shift from the 4th book to the 5th book. In 4th form school was still fun, objectively, in 5th form it was all exams, teachers who seeming wanted you to fail and trying to get with girls from the girls school. The fifth book suffers from being too long, not because of the tone shift to being less fun.
I thought it was good in many ways. The first thing that struck me is how it looked - like peaking through a window into history rather than watching a film.
But a lot of the films you list were Oscar successes? Maybe the idea things made today can’t be as good as anything made in the classic era of the past when all the best movies were made, by long dead geniuses? Time makes something once chic into vintage. (What is chic anyway?)
I thought the opening and other parts (like the chapel) of David Lowery The Green Knight very Tarkovsky (but I didn’t like the screenplay).
The difference between us maybe I see film makers today standing on the shoulders of your giants from the past?
Although I would also make claims for “An Angel At My Table” (Jane Campion) and “Sleeping Dogs”, which launched Sam Neil’s career.
One thing I have a talent for is spotting actresses on the way up and predicting their success. Like Alicia Vikander before anyone else had heard of her, before she did anything in English. In much the same way I am now tipping Julia Schlaepfer.
I love "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" too.